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Talk:Chemosh
I'm a bit out of my element discussing specific Moabite beliefs, but I do know that the Moabites did not practice an Abramic religion, as the Edomites . . . sometimes got credit for doing, if the Scripture writer was feeling generous. Given the obscurity of the POD--we know that Goliath beat David but we don't know why David was fighting for Moab instead of Israel--I guess it's possible that Moab conquered Israel at an earlier date and imported elements of Judaism into their religion, just as, according to the "OTL" provided by Judges, Israel imported elements of the religions of the Moabites and the various others at whose expense it expanded (leading the judges and prophets to insist on brutal ethnic cleansing if not flat-out genocide: charming!) But for the Moabite chief god to become synonymous with YHWH, we'd need an adoption of a conquered people's religion that was at least as dramatic as the Romans turning to worship the Olympians after they conquered Greece. In fact the Moabites would have to get as close to Judaism as Christianity and Islam are today, and monotheism is an indispensible prerequisite. But if Chemosh is only the "principle deity of the Moabites," they're not monotheist. Now the section says "many fanatical Moabites" believed Chemosh was the only true god; we can discount the modifier fanatical since it comes from a POV who is the Moabites' enemy, but many remains, and many isn't all. :A variation on either extreme would be a POD where Israelis and Moabites lived peacefully and the two cultures intermingled and eventually becoming one. TF seems to be suggesting that below when he gives the Samaritan example except I'm suggesting this occurred without outside pressure. ML4E 16:58, June 25, 2011 (UTC) ::True. I would point out that, since Philistia failed to dominate the region when two of its major rivals were fighting each other, it seems pretty unlikely that they would be able to overcome the combined might of an Israelite-Moabite alliance; but we just don't know anywhere near enough to say, do we? Turtle Fan 21:29, June 25, 2011 (UTC) I still haven't read this story in full, I think it's going to be one of those that I learn about primarily through this project, like BIDM or HtB. So I know I'm at a disadvantage and that you'll always know more about it than me, but from the way the section to which this article redirects is written, I feel it should be moved here and treated as a separate article. If there's more evidence that Chemosh is indeed YHWH, some clarifying points need inserting. Turtle Fan 05:39, June 23, 2011 (UTC) :I had mixed feelings about making Chemosh = God. When I reread the story in the AaOP anthology, I was struck by the description of Chemosh being a man with a white beard, the stereotypical image of God, and so I decided to make the article a sub-section in the God article. However, on you comments I am having second thoughts and will do it up as a separate article. Material on Chemosh is sparse but I'll do what I can. ML4E 21:17, June 24, 2011 (UTC) ::I think the presumption that because the Philistines call the people Moabites must mean that they are in fact direct descendents of Moabites is probably not correct. I haven't read the story either, but given HT tropes, it's worth remembering that the name "Palestinian" is an old one that has referred to different peoples at different times and places with varying degrees of accuracy, and has been used to describe more than just the present day people of Palestine. ::Perhaps a better analogy: the Native Americans came to be called Indians because Columbus assumed he was in India, and even after the truth was determined, the name stuck. ::This of course, does nothing to resolve the issue of whether or not Chemosh is God. TR 21:53, June 24, 2011 (UTC) :::True. They could be like the Samaritans, a mixture of Jews and their various neighbors who were also ethnically cleansed by the Assyrians, with elements of each group's religion also mixed in. Maybe after holding the upper hand for so long, the Philistines started seeing all their subject races as more or less the same, and enforced policies which caused them all to mingle till cultural distinctions broke down. Moab contributed the names of the nation and the god, but Israel contributed monotheism--which caught on imperfectly--and the arbitrary way of representing a purely spiritual being in a physical form. Turtle Fan 23:31, June 24, 2011 (UTC) :The story does seem to depict a movement from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism among the Moabites similar to what happened with Judaism. Whether this is because of Israeli influence or due to parallel social development by Moab isn't clear in the story. ::They may be developing monotheism, but monotheism and Abramism are not one and the same. In OTL there have been monotheistic religions which developed independently of Hebrew influence: Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, the cult of Akhenaten (sp?) The god at the center of each of those religions is theologically fundamentally different from the god of the Abramic religions, whereas the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam share a common theological root. ::If the Moabites are monotheistic, but arrived at their monotheism independent of Jewish influence (or with only peripheral influence; if David was fighting for them, there must have been enough contact between the two nations to ensure some form of cultural interplay). In that case Chemosh is likie the deity of the monotheists in a series that's better off forgotten. That's a fundamentally different God from the Abramic one so I gave him his own article. Adding him to the article on God because he shared a comparable position in a different continuity struck me as something like making Thomas Dewey and J Edgar Hoover subsections of Dwight Eisenhower on the grounds that all three were the thirty-fourth Presidents of the United States in their respective timelines. Turtle Fan 21:29, June 25, 2011 (UTC) :However, until either of you read the story, I think it best to leave this as a separate article for now. ML4E 16:58, June 25, 2011 (UTC) Posit: David Slaying Goliath IS the POD! Related to some of the points above, I'm wondering if maybe Goliath defeating David is the POD. Consider this situation: Israel and Moab were always enemies, as we're used to, and after Philistia conquered Israel it went on a roll and picked off Moab as well. Israel had its spirit broken by a string of defeats (David's victory ended a losing streak against Philistia that stretched back to shortly before the birth of Samuel, and would encompass all the living memory of even the most elderly Israelites.) Moab was much pluckier in its resistance, so Philistine soldiers eventually came to think of their primary duty as holding down Moabites--which they still do by the time of the story. Everyone who fights the Israelites whenever they try to put something togethr is a veteran of Moabite campaigns and employs tactics learned against Moab. Philistines dictate policy for Moab and apply it to Israel as well, eventually losing track of the difference altogether. Israelites used to hate Moabites almost as much as they did Philistines, but eventually they came to think of the enemy of their enemy as their friend. Then they eventually start thinking of themselves as Moabites in reaction to Philistia's one-size-fits-all policies, along with however many other groups the Philistines had conquered. In the US today, very few Americans could meaningfully distinguish between, say, the Blackfoot and the Crow, though the historical rivalry between the two was on a par with that between the English and the French; and while those of Amerind descent are more aware of their heritage, they're also aware of a common experience which generally trumps ethnicity. For instance, I have heard from people who've lived on Nez Perce reservations that the Nez Perce identify Little Big Horn as a victory of the Plains Indians over the US military, despite the fact that the Sioux were their traditional enemies, and that's after just one century and change. The Roman conquest of Greece provides another example: There was some sense of a Greek nationalism long before the Etruscans had even settled the Seven Hills, with the Greek city-states having banded together against the Persians three times in the sixth century BC and their most celebrated work of literature depicting another, possibly historic, occasion of all of Greece fighting an outside enemy (the Trojans) as a unit. But it was the Romans treating all Greeks exactly the same way, without regard for city-state of origin, that led to those distinctions losing their meaning. So over time, the Evraioi/Israelites/Hebrews/Jews/whatever you want to call them come to be thought of as a subset of Moabites, by themselves, by their fellow Moabites, by the Philistines, by those nasty Turkish Buddhists, and by whomever else is watching. This is not necessarily invalid; the peoples of Moab and Israel were related both ethnologically and linguistically, so it would be no different from, say, Bavarians buying into German nationalism. Then once the Evraioi are as Moabite as any other Moabites, a free exchange of culture can commence, and if Chemosh becomes the Ineffable by another name (well, A'' name) it would make great sense. A God who says "You're My chosen people, and by the way, I'm the ''only god up here" would certainly appeal in a special way to an occupied race that defines itself largely by hatred of an enemy that it can't ever seem to beat on this world. I would look for the caveat " . . . And Chemosh will punish the Philistines in the afterlife" somewhere in there; Philistia's dominance has gone on far too long as of the story for belief that Chemosh will reward his chosen people with a lasting worldly victory to continue to sustain them, and Judaism at the time of David had nothing whatsoever to support such a shift. Turtle Fan 02:08, June 28, 2011 (UTC) :I have no problem with this scenario as I was never wholly convinced the POD had to be before the David vs Goliath fight. ML4E 19:08, June 30, 2011 (UTC)